Back to the Rhine!

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 13523, 6 October 1916, Page 2

Back to the Rhine!

OR ATTRITION SOLELY?

TWO FALLACIES EXAMINED.

There are, broadly, two fairly common conceptions of the probable future course of the military operations in the west (said a writer in the "New Statesman" of July 22). One looks forward to a monotonous and terribly costly process in which the Germans will be driven back step by step, from trench line to trench line through France and Belgium, offering at every stage the sort of resistance which the British Army offered at Ypres, the French army at Verdun, and the Germans themselves at Loos, in Champagne, and now on the Somme, until at last they reach the Rhine, where they will make a desperate and probably successful stand on what is a more or less impregnable line of defence. That conception—which was' commoner, perhaps, twelve months ago than it is to-day —is, of course, false in nearly all its premises, and bears little relation to likelihoods, or even possibilities. The other conception, which is more up to date but hardly more cheerful, embodies the idea of "attrition." It looks on the war in the west as a simple question of wastage. We must kill or disable a million or so Germans, either on the present line or elsewhere; it will probably cost us an almost equal expenditure of men, but when we have done it the Germans will have too few men to hold so extended a line, and we shall be able to "break through." This picture is much nearer the truth than the other, but in its crude form it is probably almost as misleading. Both conceptions overlook the fact tnat although in modern warfare armies are disposed along vast trench lines covering hundreds of miles, heavy fighting only takes place ■ on quite narrow fronts at selected points, where both sides, first the attackers and then the defenders, concentrate enormous - masses of men and guns forming a large fraction of their total resources. At the present moment there are two such' concentrations in the west, one at Verdun and the other on the Somme. Tho Germans apparently were confident that they had so engaged and weakened the French at Verdun that it would be impossible for them to prepare a serious concentration at any other point. Events have shown that they were mistaken, but if they had been right, then their Verdun offensive might have been worth all it cost them. It is important to picture the struggle as a series of separate offensives rather than as a continuous line, because if and when there comes a time when one side, although it has still men and guns enough to man its front as a whole on the recognised minimum scale, cannot meet a concentration at any given point by an approximately equal concentration, then something will happen which has never yet happened on the western front. The stronger side will occupy territory, taking probably great numbers of prisoners, as quickly and as easily as the Russians have lately done in the Bukowina.

Here is where the fallacy of the crude attrition theory appears to lie. It is perfectly true that everything turns on numbers, but is not true that as long as the Germans can maintain a force of so many men per yard along their whole front they will be able to offer sustained resistance to any at< tacking force which may be brought against them. It is not enough that they should have, say, 2,000,000 men, with proportionate guns, on their western, front; they must have approximately the same number of men as the Allies can bring against them, or they will risk disaster. It is fairly clear that just now on the Somme, although we are steadily advancing, the Germans can oppose us in such foree that, accidents aaprt, they have nothing worse to fear that the necessity of a gradual withdrawal extending over a front of a dozen miles or so; and if the Allies were now putting forth their maximum effort, then, indeed, failing a break, we should have to wait for a long time for the gradual process of attrition to do its work. But suppose—it is a mere supposition —tuat the Allies now possess so many men and guns that they can afford to make another concentration and begin a fresh attack on the same scale on Another part of the line, then the whole situation is changed. There is reason to believe that the resources of the Germans are already strained to their limit; that whilst they still have drafts (of doubtful quality perhaps) wherewith to fill up gaps in their present formations, they have very few, if any, reserve units which they can bring into action as such. It is therefore doubtful whether they could take any measures adequate to meet a new first-class British or French offensive at Ypres or Loos or in Champagne, And if they could not —well, dramatic events would follow. There are, of course, very obvious and elementary considerations, but they seem to be worth recalling, not only because they serve to correct the two fallacious conceptions which wo have referred to, but because they dispose also of that yet more erroneous but still, we fear, uneradicated picture of dwindling German numbers being replaced by tens of thousands of machine guns. Millions of machine guns will not save the Germans if at some noint or other we can concentrate 1 of howitzers and divisions of infantry which they cannot meet by a like concentration. ElaT>o>ate systems of trenches and underground dugouts hamper the stronger side, but they cannot avert or even very greatly delay its victory. For a long line to be as stable as many people still imagine the western front to 'be, there must be approximately equal forces on either side; otherwise by means of simultaneous offensives at several points the side which has a substantial predominance can at any t :r ne force the issue and make the enemy's line too dangerous to be hold.